Fic: Lost Years | DCU | Clark/Bruce | PG-13 | 6/18
Title: Lost Years - Part 6
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Rating: NC-17 (overall); PG-13 (this section)
Word Count: 3,013 (this section)
Prompt: For the World's Finest Gift Exchange, #F46: Batman and Superman are stranded on a lonely planet and are lost for years before returning home. What happens? Universe is writer's choice.
Summary: (this section) Clark and Bruce start building onto their homestead. A little time passes. Plans are made... and rejected.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own it all. I own nothing. Darnit.
Author's Note: This is coming together better than I thought it would! O_O
Index Post
Part 6
Listening to the not-quite-chicken/duck things squawking away in the coop he and Clark finished building three days ago, Bruce can't help but wonder if he'll ever get used to the noise. Nothing on Earth ever sounded that... that irritating. But his companion has assured him that the birds' call isn't much worse than a goose honk.
Bruce wouldn't know.
As it is, he hasn't been able to get much sleep over the last few nights, serenaded by the wailing at all hours.
“I swear, it's like they don't ever sleep,” he grumbles at Clark as they rise from the small table to finish cleaning up from breakfast.
“You'll get used to it... eventually. I promise,” the Kryptonian smiles at him across the tiny kitchen area.
“Says the farm boy.”
Clark grins, chuckling, “Grouch.”
“Hmph. You would be, too, if you weren't getting any sleep.”
“Well, if I recall, the entire first month that-”
Cutting him off with a glare, Bruce rinses out his coffee mug in the small sink next to the wood stove and sits it on the shelf above.
“We were both pretty grouchy, I guess,” Clark says sheepishly instead.
“Not that things have improved too terribly much,” the Bat retorts, moving to grab his not-quite-deer suede jacket and shrug it on over his somewhat beaten uniform shirt.
“At least we have heat and hot running water in the house now,” the taller man reminds him. “Things could be worse.”
Bruce nods in silent agreement, remembering the cave. Damned dismal place. But he supposes the cave has its benefits, though; the cool space has turned out to be the perfect storage cellar for the mountains of tubers, dried fruits, and other vegetables, spices, and supplies they've been able to gather over the last three weeks.
Behind him, Clark pulls on his own jacket, and they head out the door and down the steps, ready to start their sixty-seventh day on this otherwise quiet planet. Gravel - hauled up from the beach to make a walkway around their little farm - crunching under their boots, they pass the chicken/duck coop on their way to the mostly built barn. Clark runs his fingers over the chicken wire of the coop, clucking at the birds as they ruffle their shimmering black feathers and snap their purplish beaks at the two men. “Settle down, girls,” he soothes them with a small smile.
Bruce can't help his own private smile at his companion. Clark Kent: farm boy, tamer of wild chicken/ducks, builder of space ships and barns, superhero.
But most importantly, now, farm boy.
The Bat is pretty sure he'd be living off of grubs and leaves at this point - a survivalist sticking to survivalist methods - if he didn't have his Kryptonian around, and - as usual - as they set to work finishing the outside walls of the small barn, he's reminded of that fact with glaring evidence.
“I think I should head out this afternoon to look for more of that dried grass,” Clark announces, hammering a plank into place on one wall. “We'll need to gather as much as we can before we can round up livestock, because once the snow comes, there won't be much chance to go out for hay if we run out.”
For a second, Bruce just stares at him, not completely comprehending the sentence. Then he remembers Clark's lecture on keeping farm animals, the ten minutes he went on about hay and its proper storage and why, exactly, they needed an equivalent of it. “Oh. Okay,” he finally says, turning back to his own hammering. Then, “While you're out, I don't suppose you can look for something resembling cotton fibers?”
“Cotton?” Clark repeats, his face blank. But then he seems to catch onto Bruce's suggestion, and he raises his eyebrows in question. “So, you're serious about trying to make fabrics?”
“What the hell else are we gonna do all damned winter? Besides, I've already got plans drawn up for a spinning wheel and a weaving loom, and we need new clothes.”
The other man tries to hide a snicker at that, drawing another glare from the Bat. “I never thought you could be that domestic, Bruce.”
“Shut up. I'm tired of wearing the same damned underwear everyday.”
“Heh. You could be the one walking around with a burnt hole in your sock. I can't even sew it closed!”
“Not my fault you had to go get struck by lightning. I told you we needed a lightning rod, but did you listen? Noooo...”
At the first mention of the incident since it happened, the humor falls from Clark's face and he looks at Bruce, his brow furrowed.
Smacking himself mentally, Bruce can't believe he brought up that day, dragging with it all the associated baggage that he'd been so careful to skirt around ever since. He was hoping Clark might have put it out of his mind, but the look he's getting from the taller man says otherwise, and he involuntarily launches into a hurried backpedal, the cold winter wind suddenly getting to him, despite the full sunshine, “Sorry, I shouldn't have said anyth-”
“No, no, it's okay,” Clark says quietly. “I... I guess that kinda was my fault, wasn't it?”
“No,” Bruce whispers, for some reason unable to look his companion in the face now.
With a sigh, Clark shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes. “Maybe it was neither of our fault. Still. I'm sorry I scared you like that.” Falling quiet, he lays his hammer down and clenches the sides of the plank he was about to hoist into place.
The Bat's chest clenches, the thing that's been eating at him for a month finally breaking through, and he unwittingly lets his hammer hand slide down the wall, the other palm set flat against his own plank. “You have no idea just how scared I was, Clark. I... thought you were dead.”
“I might have been. But I'm not now. And believe me, being hurt that badly... it scared me a lot, too. I've never taken that long to heal from something before.”
“Haven't you? Or have you just forgotten about Doomsday?” Bruce chokes out. After seeing his friend dead once before... dealing with just the momentary possibility had been too much to handle. That much he can at least admit to himself now.
Clark draws in a deep breath, looking away for a long moment. When he looks back, he starts, “I haven't forgotten. But... that was different. Then, I... I knew I would heal. I knew I would get my powers back in time. Now, I don't-”
“Not for me, it wasn't different,” the Bat cuts him off. “You were dead, Clark. Dead. When I saw you get struck, I...” But he can't finish the sentence, the growing knot in his throat choking him as he drops his hammer.
“Hey. Shhh...” Clark whispers, releasing his plank and moving to cup Bruce's face in his hands. “Is... is that why you wouldn't talk to me afterward? Why you left?”
Bruce's only answer is to slide his hands beneath Clark's jacket and around his waist to pull him close, burying his face in his Kryptonian's shoulder, still unable to voice anything more than he already has.
* * * * *
Another cold night on the lonely planet, another night spent sleeping snuggled close in their pushed together cots. Clark wonders if there's a solution, one that doesn't involve admitting to Bruce that this arrangement just isn't working. Maybe I should just surprise him with a bigger bed. A real bed, he thinks, his arms wrapped awkwardly around his Bat. He knows Bruce has been reluctant to admit that things have changed between them. The fact that it took him a month to fully admit how terrified he'd been after the lightning strike is evidence enough of that.
Still, Clark has been feeling... anxious, for the better part of a month now, thinking Bruce's return might actually mean something other than a return to their strained friendship. Actually having the man in his arms is only making things worse for him.
But he can't push Bruce. He won't. As long as his companion is here, with him, he'll do everything he can to be contented with that.
CRUNCH.
The sound of a heavy foot on the gravel outside is an instant alarm, dragging Clark out of his sleepy thoughts. Carefully, he disentangles himself from the other man, not wanting to wake him, and slips out of his cot.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH.
Clark is by the window in a heartbeat, peering out into the darkness. Damn, can't see a thing... But he can still hear well enough to...
The heavy huffed breaths of a large animal meet his ears, and he knows at once what he's dealing with. Damn. He'd hoped they wouldn't come this far south, or would be scared off by the odd activities of the strangers to this world.
But the sudden hand on his bare shoulder makes him jump nearly out of his own skin, and he whirls to find Bruce behind him. As if it would have been anyone else... he rolls his eyes at himself with a deep sigh.
“What is it?” the Bat asks, his voice barely a whisper.
“Bear. It's either after the chicken/ducks, or the other animals in the barn.” Clark doesn't really want to have to deal with an attack on their livestock; they only just gathered the few woolly cows and long-snouted boars five days before! It would be difficult to replace them, this far into the winter, when the herds are already moving on and the boars are burrowing into their dens.
“I'll deal with it,” Bruce nods, shrugging on his shirt and digging into his belt on the nightstand. “How much salt did you store in the cave last week?”
“About a hundred pounds. Why?” he replies, ignoring the assumption that he can't even defend them anymore, that his combat skills are so lacking recently, without his powers at full strength, that the bear would tear him in half if he were to confront it.
Bruce gives him a smirk, the sharpened edge of the Batarang in his hand glinting with the pale light of one of this world's moons. “Our menu now officially includes bear.”
“I guess we should make plans for a curing and smoke house tomorrow?” Clark smiles faintly.
“Damn right.”
* * * * *
This world's approximation of bear meat turns out to be nothing at all like Earth bear, as Clark realizes over dinner the next night. More like pork, actually, which is absolutely confusing since the long-snouted boar meat tastes like beef, and the chicken/duck meat tastes like lamb. It's enough to give even culinary experts a headache.
“How are we ever gonna keep all these weird foods straight, Clark?” Bruce asks him over the small table at the opposite side of the open room from the cots, seeming to have read his mind.
Clark gives a little smirk. “Maybe we should start keeping records,” he teases, glancing at the wide slates, covered in Bruce's crowded handwriting.
“Hmph,” the Bat glowers, his expression highlighted eerily in the flickering light of the metal oil lamp on the table. “There's not enough slate on this planet for me to keep all the records I'd like to.”
“Well...” Pausing a moment, Clark mulls over an idea that he's been working out for a few weeks. “What about paper?”
“Paper,” Bruce repeats.
“Yeah. It's a pretty simple process, mostly just mushing wood chips into pulp and straining it until we can bond the fibers together.”
Laying his fork down, the Bat pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes. “I know how paper is made, Clark.” Then he straightens, looking at his companion. “What I mean is, are you serious? Because I could go through a ream of paper in no time. I bet you could, too.”
“Are you still serious about the weaving loom?” Clark says, eying the pile of cotton-like fibers in one corner that Bruce had only just started to spin into thread.
“Of course I am. And I'm serious about making soap, too, so we can get clean. It's not like we don't have enough wood ashes and animal fat for it.”
“Then, yes. I'm serious about making paper. Besides the possibility of making disposable toilet paper-”
“That'd be nice. Those leaf things are killing me.”
“Hey, it could be worse, at least we aren't women,” Clark points out.
Bruce shudders dramatically, then snickers, “Can you imagine if Diana had been stranded here? Or Lois?”
“With their combined experience? They'd be running the place,” the taller man chuckles. “And doing a much better job than we are.” At Bruce's amused snort of agreement, he continues, “Anyway, besides all that that, I think it would do us both a lot of good to have something more to write on.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “God, it's been almost three months since I wrote my last article.”
“You must be going nuts,” Bruce smirks at him.
“You have no idea. I think my vocabulary is shrinking.”
“Hmph. If we don't get it warmer in here, there'll be a lot more shrinking than just your vocabulary.”
Clark can only stare at him.
“Sorry,” Bruce shakes his head, “stupid humor. I think we're both losing IQ points, here.”
The Kryptonian nods, agreeing readily, “All the more reason to make paper. And we can make ink from those black winter berries I've seen popping up.”
“Good idea.”
With that, they fall into a companionable silence as they finish their dinner, Clark not really paying attention to the taste of the food anymore. For some reason, he can't get his mind past Bruce's offhand comment, and it keeps looping through his head like it might have some significance he hasn't deciphered yet.
But he shakes his head to clear out the strange associated mental images, trying to brush it off as they finally finish eating and rise to clean up.
The thought of the cold lingers with him, though, and as Bruce settles back at the improvised spinning wheel to make more thick cotton-like thread, another idea solidifies in Clark's mind. “Maybe we should go ahead and build a fireplace,” he suggests, sitting back at the table with a cup of hot almost-chocolate, its taste reminiscent of carob.
Bruce looks up at him from his work. “We're full of plans tonight, aren't we?”
“Yeah. But, like you said before, what else are we gonna do?”
“True.” Turning back to the spinning, he continues. “We either need more slate, or we'll need to bake bricks. A lot of bricks.”
Clark thinks for a moment. “Slate is probably easier, but it might be smart to make bricks. That way, if we need more for something else down the line, we'll already have the kiln and the brick forms. We'll also be able to make ceramics, maybe make some real dishes.”
Bruce gives him a thoughtful sideways glance. “You prepared to go find enough mud and sand before the first snow hits?”
“I can do it. There's more than enough of both down the beach, and I'm not entirely powerless, you know,” the taller man shoots back, a little more defensively than he intended.
The glare of the Bat makes color rise up on his cheeks. “I know that,” Bruce says quietly.
“Sorry,” Clark sighs. Looking away, he finds his gaze settling onto the pushed together cots, their patchwork hide blankets piled haphazardly over them, hiding the awkward separation in the middle. If he squints, he can pretend it's really one bed.
That just gets him thinking about the idea he had the night before, and he finds himself anxious to do something about it. He'd love to just build them a bed, surprise Bruce with it, and live happily ever after. But he has to remind himself that stupid fantasies like that are the realm of fairy tales, not bare bones survival on a lonely world. Bruce would flip out. If he didn't catch Clark mid-construction first. Either way, it would be a disaster.
Deciding that honesty is the only way to go - and ignoring the possibility that it could all blow up in his face - Clark starts, “There's something else I want to do, too.”
“Oh?” The question sparkling in Bruce's eyes with the low lamp-light makes the Kryptonian's stomach flip.
“I... want to build us a bed. A real bed. With a real mattress.”
“What for?” The hesitation in the Bat's voice is clear.
“So we can sleep comfortably,” he says simply, not daring to imply more.
Bruce narrows his eyes at him, and Clark hears his pulse quicken, before being forced back to a calmer rate with the Bat's controlled breath. “I'm comfortable with what we have now.”
“Bruce...” Clark tries not to whine. “What we have isn't exactly an ideal sleeping situation, and you know it. We can do better.”
“I don't see any reason to change things now,” the other man retorts coolly, growing more distant as he focuses back on his spinning.
Clark sighs, running a hand through his hair again. He supposes things could have gone worse, but really, what could he have expected? Fantasy, Kent. Get used to being disappointed. “Fine,” he says after finishing his hot almost-chocolate. “I'm gonna turn in.”
When he gets no response from the Bat, he rinses his mug in the sink and sets it on the shelf next to Bruce's, his stomach doing more acrobatics, and not in a good way. He strips off his top and climbs into his cot, pulling the covers over his head.
Hours later, when Bruce finally extinguishes the lamp to come to bed himself, Clark hears the scraping of the other cot against the floor, the Bat's bed being dragged away from his own.
He shivers, freezing and lonely, until the sun comes up.
* * * * *
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Rating: NC-17 (overall); PG-13 (this section)
Word Count: 3,013 (this section)
Prompt: For the World's Finest Gift Exchange, #F46: Batman and Superman are stranded on a lonely planet and are lost for years before returning home. What happens? Universe is writer's choice.
Summary: (this section) Clark and Bruce start building onto their homestead. A little time passes. Plans are made... and rejected.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own it all. I own nothing. Darnit.
Author's Note: This is coming together better than I thought it would! O_O
Index Post
Part 6
Listening to the not-quite-chicken/duck things squawking away in the coop he and Clark finished building three days ago, Bruce can't help but wonder if he'll ever get used to the noise. Nothing on Earth ever sounded that... that irritating. But his companion has assured him that the birds' call isn't much worse than a goose honk.
Bruce wouldn't know.
As it is, he hasn't been able to get much sleep over the last few nights, serenaded by the wailing at all hours.
“I swear, it's like they don't ever sleep,” he grumbles at Clark as they rise from the small table to finish cleaning up from breakfast.
“You'll get used to it... eventually. I promise,” the Kryptonian smiles at him across the tiny kitchen area.
“Says the farm boy.”
Clark grins, chuckling, “Grouch.”
“Hmph. You would be, too, if you weren't getting any sleep.”
“Well, if I recall, the entire first month that-”
Cutting him off with a glare, Bruce rinses out his coffee mug in the small sink next to the wood stove and sits it on the shelf above.
“We were both pretty grouchy, I guess,” Clark says sheepishly instead.
“Not that things have improved too terribly much,” the Bat retorts, moving to grab his not-quite-deer suede jacket and shrug it on over his somewhat beaten uniform shirt.
“At least we have heat and hot running water in the house now,” the taller man reminds him. “Things could be worse.”
Bruce nods in silent agreement, remembering the cave. Damned dismal place. But he supposes the cave has its benefits, though; the cool space has turned out to be the perfect storage cellar for the mountains of tubers, dried fruits, and other vegetables, spices, and supplies they've been able to gather over the last three weeks.
Behind him, Clark pulls on his own jacket, and they head out the door and down the steps, ready to start their sixty-seventh day on this otherwise quiet planet. Gravel - hauled up from the beach to make a walkway around their little farm - crunching under their boots, they pass the chicken/duck coop on their way to the mostly built barn. Clark runs his fingers over the chicken wire of the coop, clucking at the birds as they ruffle their shimmering black feathers and snap their purplish beaks at the two men. “Settle down, girls,” he soothes them with a small smile.
Bruce can't help his own private smile at his companion. Clark Kent: farm boy, tamer of wild chicken/ducks, builder of space ships and barns, superhero.
But most importantly, now, farm boy.
The Bat is pretty sure he'd be living off of grubs and leaves at this point - a survivalist sticking to survivalist methods - if he didn't have his Kryptonian around, and - as usual - as they set to work finishing the outside walls of the small barn, he's reminded of that fact with glaring evidence.
“I think I should head out this afternoon to look for more of that dried grass,” Clark announces, hammering a plank into place on one wall. “We'll need to gather as much as we can before we can round up livestock, because once the snow comes, there won't be much chance to go out for hay if we run out.”
For a second, Bruce just stares at him, not completely comprehending the sentence. Then he remembers Clark's lecture on keeping farm animals, the ten minutes he went on about hay and its proper storage and why, exactly, they needed an equivalent of it. “Oh. Okay,” he finally says, turning back to his own hammering. Then, “While you're out, I don't suppose you can look for something resembling cotton fibers?”
“Cotton?” Clark repeats, his face blank. But then he seems to catch onto Bruce's suggestion, and he raises his eyebrows in question. “So, you're serious about trying to make fabrics?”
“What the hell else are we gonna do all damned winter? Besides, I've already got plans drawn up for a spinning wheel and a weaving loom, and we need new clothes.”
The other man tries to hide a snicker at that, drawing another glare from the Bat. “I never thought you could be that domestic, Bruce.”
“Shut up. I'm tired of wearing the same damned underwear everyday.”
“Heh. You could be the one walking around with a burnt hole in your sock. I can't even sew it closed!”
“Not my fault you had to go get struck by lightning. I told you we needed a lightning rod, but did you listen? Noooo...”
At the first mention of the incident since it happened, the humor falls from Clark's face and he looks at Bruce, his brow furrowed.
Smacking himself mentally, Bruce can't believe he brought up that day, dragging with it all the associated baggage that he'd been so careful to skirt around ever since. He was hoping Clark might have put it out of his mind, but the look he's getting from the taller man says otherwise, and he involuntarily launches into a hurried backpedal, the cold winter wind suddenly getting to him, despite the full sunshine, “Sorry, I shouldn't have said anyth-”
“No, no, it's okay,” Clark says quietly. “I... I guess that kinda was my fault, wasn't it?”
“No,” Bruce whispers, for some reason unable to look his companion in the face now.
With a sigh, Clark shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes. “Maybe it was neither of our fault. Still. I'm sorry I scared you like that.” Falling quiet, he lays his hammer down and clenches the sides of the plank he was about to hoist into place.
The Bat's chest clenches, the thing that's been eating at him for a month finally breaking through, and he unwittingly lets his hammer hand slide down the wall, the other palm set flat against his own plank. “You have no idea just how scared I was, Clark. I... thought you were dead.”
“I might have been. But I'm not now. And believe me, being hurt that badly... it scared me a lot, too. I've never taken that long to heal from something before.”
“Haven't you? Or have you just forgotten about Doomsday?” Bruce chokes out. After seeing his friend dead once before... dealing with just the momentary possibility had been too much to handle. That much he can at least admit to himself now.
Clark draws in a deep breath, looking away for a long moment. When he looks back, he starts, “I haven't forgotten. But... that was different. Then, I... I knew I would heal. I knew I would get my powers back in time. Now, I don't-”
“Not for me, it wasn't different,” the Bat cuts him off. “You were dead, Clark. Dead. When I saw you get struck, I...” But he can't finish the sentence, the growing knot in his throat choking him as he drops his hammer.
“Hey. Shhh...” Clark whispers, releasing his plank and moving to cup Bruce's face in his hands. “Is... is that why you wouldn't talk to me afterward? Why you left?”
Bruce's only answer is to slide his hands beneath Clark's jacket and around his waist to pull him close, burying his face in his Kryptonian's shoulder, still unable to voice anything more than he already has.
* * * * *
Another cold night on the lonely planet, another night spent sleeping snuggled close in their pushed together cots. Clark wonders if there's a solution, one that doesn't involve admitting to Bruce that this arrangement just isn't working. Maybe I should just surprise him with a bigger bed. A real bed, he thinks, his arms wrapped awkwardly around his Bat. He knows Bruce has been reluctant to admit that things have changed between them. The fact that it took him a month to fully admit how terrified he'd been after the lightning strike is evidence enough of that.
Still, Clark has been feeling... anxious, for the better part of a month now, thinking Bruce's return might actually mean something other than a return to their strained friendship. Actually having the man in his arms is only making things worse for him.
But he can't push Bruce. He won't. As long as his companion is here, with him, he'll do everything he can to be contented with that.
CRUNCH.
The sound of a heavy foot on the gravel outside is an instant alarm, dragging Clark out of his sleepy thoughts. Carefully, he disentangles himself from the other man, not wanting to wake him, and slips out of his cot.
CRUNCH, CRUNCH.
Clark is by the window in a heartbeat, peering out into the darkness. Damn, can't see a thing... But he can still hear well enough to...
The heavy huffed breaths of a large animal meet his ears, and he knows at once what he's dealing with. Damn. He'd hoped they wouldn't come this far south, or would be scared off by the odd activities of the strangers to this world.
But the sudden hand on his bare shoulder makes him jump nearly out of his own skin, and he whirls to find Bruce behind him. As if it would have been anyone else... he rolls his eyes at himself with a deep sigh.
“What is it?” the Bat asks, his voice barely a whisper.
“Bear. It's either after the chicken/ducks, or the other animals in the barn.” Clark doesn't really want to have to deal with an attack on their livestock; they only just gathered the few woolly cows and long-snouted boars five days before! It would be difficult to replace them, this far into the winter, when the herds are already moving on and the boars are burrowing into their dens.
“I'll deal with it,” Bruce nods, shrugging on his shirt and digging into his belt on the nightstand. “How much salt did you store in the cave last week?”
“About a hundred pounds. Why?” he replies, ignoring the assumption that he can't even defend them anymore, that his combat skills are so lacking recently, without his powers at full strength, that the bear would tear him in half if he were to confront it.
Bruce gives him a smirk, the sharpened edge of the Batarang in his hand glinting with the pale light of one of this world's moons. “Our menu now officially includes bear.”
“I guess we should make plans for a curing and smoke house tomorrow?” Clark smiles faintly.
“Damn right.”
* * * * *
This world's approximation of bear meat turns out to be nothing at all like Earth bear, as Clark realizes over dinner the next night. More like pork, actually, which is absolutely confusing since the long-snouted boar meat tastes like beef, and the chicken/duck meat tastes like lamb. It's enough to give even culinary experts a headache.
“How are we ever gonna keep all these weird foods straight, Clark?” Bruce asks him over the small table at the opposite side of the open room from the cots, seeming to have read his mind.
Clark gives a little smirk. “Maybe we should start keeping records,” he teases, glancing at the wide slates, covered in Bruce's crowded handwriting.
“Hmph,” the Bat glowers, his expression highlighted eerily in the flickering light of the metal oil lamp on the table. “There's not enough slate on this planet for me to keep all the records I'd like to.”
“Well...” Pausing a moment, Clark mulls over an idea that he's been working out for a few weeks. “What about paper?”
“Paper,” Bruce repeats.
“Yeah. It's a pretty simple process, mostly just mushing wood chips into pulp and straining it until we can bond the fibers together.”
Laying his fork down, the Bat pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes. “I know how paper is made, Clark.” Then he straightens, looking at his companion. “What I mean is, are you serious? Because I could go through a ream of paper in no time. I bet you could, too.”
“Are you still serious about the weaving loom?” Clark says, eying the pile of cotton-like fibers in one corner that Bruce had only just started to spin into thread.
“Of course I am. And I'm serious about making soap, too, so we can get clean. It's not like we don't have enough wood ashes and animal fat for it.”
“Then, yes. I'm serious about making paper. Besides the possibility of making disposable toilet paper-”
“That'd be nice. Those leaf things are killing me.”
“Hey, it could be worse, at least we aren't women,” Clark points out.
Bruce shudders dramatically, then snickers, “Can you imagine if Diana had been stranded here? Or Lois?”
“With their combined experience? They'd be running the place,” the taller man chuckles. “And doing a much better job than we are.” At Bruce's amused snort of agreement, he continues, “Anyway, besides all that that, I think it would do us both a lot of good to have something more to write on.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “God, it's been almost three months since I wrote my last article.”
“You must be going nuts,” Bruce smirks at him.
“You have no idea. I think my vocabulary is shrinking.”
“Hmph. If we don't get it warmer in here, there'll be a lot more shrinking than just your vocabulary.”
Clark can only stare at him.
“Sorry,” Bruce shakes his head, “stupid humor. I think we're both losing IQ points, here.”
The Kryptonian nods, agreeing readily, “All the more reason to make paper. And we can make ink from those black winter berries I've seen popping up.”
“Good idea.”
With that, they fall into a companionable silence as they finish their dinner, Clark not really paying attention to the taste of the food anymore. For some reason, he can't get his mind past Bruce's offhand comment, and it keeps looping through his head like it might have some significance he hasn't deciphered yet.
But he shakes his head to clear out the strange associated mental images, trying to brush it off as they finally finish eating and rise to clean up.
The thought of the cold lingers with him, though, and as Bruce settles back at the improvised spinning wheel to make more thick cotton-like thread, another idea solidifies in Clark's mind. “Maybe we should go ahead and build a fireplace,” he suggests, sitting back at the table with a cup of hot almost-chocolate, its taste reminiscent of carob.
Bruce looks up at him from his work. “We're full of plans tonight, aren't we?”
“Yeah. But, like you said before, what else are we gonna do?”
“True.” Turning back to the spinning, he continues. “We either need more slate, or we'll need to bake bricks. A lot of bricks.”
Clark thinks for a moment. “Slate is probably easier, but it might be smart to make bricks. That way, if we need more for something else down the line, we'll already have the kiln and the brick forms. We'll also be able to make ceramics, maybe make some real dishes.”
Bruce gives him a thoughtful sideways glance. “You prepared to go find enough mud and sand before the first snow hits?”
“I can do it. There's more than enough of both down the beach, and I'm not entirely powerless, you know,” the taller man shoots back, a little more defensively than he intended.
The glare of the Bat makes color rise up on his cheeks. “I know that,” Bruce says quietly.
“Sorry,” Clark sighs. Looking away, he finds his gaze settling onto the pushed together cots, their patchwork hide blankets piled haphazardly over them, hiding the awkward separation in the middle. If he squints, he can pretend it's really one bed.
That just gets him thinking about the idea he had the night before, and he finds himself anxious to do something about it. He'd love to just build them a bed, surprise Bruce with it, and live happily ever after. But he has to remind himself that stupid fantasies like that are the realm of fairy tales, not bare bones survival on a lonely world. Bruce would flip out. If he didn't catch Clark mid-construction first. Either way, it would be a disaster.
Deciding that honesty is the only way to go - and ignoring the possibility that it could all blow up in his face - Clark starts, “There's something else I want to do, too.”
“Oh?” The question sparkling in Bruce's eyes with the low lamp-light makes the Kryptonian's stomach flip.
“I... want to build us a bed. A real bed. With a real mattress.”
“What for?” The hesitation in the Bat's voice is clear.
“So we can sleep comfortably,” he says simply, not daring to imply more.
Bruce narrows his eyes at him, and Clark hears his pulse quicken, before being forced back to a calmer rate with the Bat's controlled breath. “I'm comfortable with what we have now.”
“Bruce...” Clark tries not to whine. “What we have isn't exactly an ideal sleeping situation, and you know it. We can do better.”
“I don't see any reason to change things now,” the other man retorts coolly, growing more distant as he focuses back on his spinning.
Clark sighs, running a hand through his hair again. He supposes things could have gone worse, but really, what could he have expected? Fantasy, Kent. Get used to being disappointed. “Fine,” he says after finishing his hot almost-chocolate. “I'm gonna turn in.”
When he gets no response from the Bat, he rinses his mug in the sink and sets it on the shelf next to Bruce's, his stomach doing more acrobatics, and not in a good way. He strips off his top and climbs into his cot, pulling the covers over his head.
Hours later, when Bruce finally extinguishes the lamp to come to bed himself, Clark hears the scraping of the other cot against the floor, the Bat's bed being dragged away from his own.
He shivers, freezing and lonely, until the sun comes up.
* * * * *